1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to printers, and particularly relates to a printer which has a function of locking bins containing printouts so that the security of each printed material can be protected.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, networking technologies for information processing systems have seen a rapid and significant development, and networking is employed in most organizations in order to allow users to share such resources as database on hard-disks, a computing power of server machines, a printer, etc., through a platform they are using which can access other resources via the network. In such a network, one or more printer servers centrally manage print jobs by accepting print requests from users, spooling print data, and sending print data to a printer when the printer is ready.
In an environment where many users share one or more printers, printouts from more than one user end up being stacked in one bin and mixed together. In order to avoid this awkward situation, printers of various types have a plurality of bins which can be allocated to individual users or user groups so that each user or each user group can have printouts without having them mixed with other users' or other groups' printouts.
While this type of printer can obviate the problem of printouts being mixed together, there is another problem of how to protect security, which is inherent in any resource sharing systems.
In computers, for example, each user's files can usually be protected from unauthorized access from other users, and such protection can be implemented by various protection modes set through attribute data attached to each file. Thus, protected files cannot be read or executed by other users if so protected, so that violation of security or accidental damage to on files by other users can be prevented.
For printers shared by many users, however, the prior art has not addressed any means for protection for printed documents. For example, if a user wishes to print out a security-sensitive document, the user may have to go to a printer site, wait for the printout to come out from the printer, and take the printout before someone else has a chance to look at or take the printout by accident. To avoid this situation, a user might wish to have the user's own printer with the user's computer. This renders meaningless the very meaning of having a network to share resources such as a printer for cost-effective purposes.
The printers which have a plurality of bins can also have a lock for each of the bins. Keys for those locks may be distributed to each individual or each group so that each can make one's bin secure by locking it with the key. In this case, however, users or user groups in a larger number than the number of the bins cannot share the printer. One solution might be to allocate some of the bins to privileged users or user groups who can have a key for the allocated bin, while other users share the rest of the bins without the privilege of security. However, this does not provide each user with a solution for the problem of the security of printouts in an environment of networking and sharing a printer.
Accordingly, there is a need in the field of printers for a printer which can provide security for printouts by locking bins containing printouts so as to prevent other users from having access to security-sensitive printouts.